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Posts tagged "driver"

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Microsoft ending third-party printer driver support is good news for you
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Microsoft revealed in a new document that it will no longer service third-party printer drivers on devices that use Windows OS, including Windows 11. 

According the article, Microsoft will allow IPP Class Driver and Mopria-compliant print devices, the latter of which got native with Windows 10 version 21H2. These will be supported instead of manufacturer-made drivers via Windows Update. This means that printer manufacturers won’t have to provide dedicated drivers, which is already a huge benefit to them.

On the consumer end, manufacturers can still offer print customization via Microsoft Store apps. Thanks to the much more streamlined and standardized approach to drivers, another consumer benefit is that there will be plenty of performance and reliability improvements alongside broad compatibility across Windows versions and editions.

The FAQ also details that Mopria certification will be a mandatory requirement for HLK (Hardware Lab Kit). It ensures printers will be compatible with other devices, including PCs, smartphones, tablets, and more: another benefit for buyers who won’t have to check compatibility themselves.

Of course, Microsoft has a planned timeline to slowly faze out v3 and v4 third-party driver support, which will take place over several years until 2027. Below you can see the full timetable.

It’s important to note that even when the switchover is complete, buyers will still have access to any existing third-party drivers. This means your old printer that’s still kicking won’t be rendered useless once support ends and only first-party drivers are updated.

Windows 11 is still bad 

This move is absolutely the right decision from Microsoft, as first-party drivers make installation and maintenance much simpler. I recall my own headaches tracking down and installing old drivers for my Brother printer; having the option to just use one from Microsoft would have saved me plenty of trouble.

That said, it would be nice if Microsoft could be so considerate when it comes to  literally anything else involving Windows 11. For instance, its obsession with getting users to upgrade to Windows 11 is annoying at best and downright enraging at  worst. Also the tons of bloatware included with pre-built PCs and laptops, the aggressive ads in the Start Menu, the popular features in previous versions that were dropped in Windows 11, etc.

And that’s not even the tip of the iceberg, with plenty more issues and problems that have been plaguing the OS. Guess you can’t win them all. Or even most of them.

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Nasty AMD driver bug tanks RDNA 3 GPU performance in Windows 11
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AMD’s new GPU driver is reportedly causing serious performance issues with RDNA 3 graphics cards under Windows 11, though the bug is a rare occurrence from what we can tell.

Another point to note carefully here is that apparently the problem is only affecting 3DMark runs, specifically the TimeSpy benchmark (we’ll come back to that later).

VideoCardz broke the news that a software engineer at Google (Osvaldo Doederlein) running an RX 7900 XTX with the most recent version 23.3.1 of the Adrenalin driver ran into trouble with much lower TimeSpy results than should have been produced.

Indeed, Doederlein’s results came out at more than 50% slower than normal, a massive performance loss.

One of the developers at UL (which makes 3DMark) replied to Doederlein to say that they raised the issue with AMD, and it appeared to be related to the latest driver version.

The dev observed: “We also looked at our [3DMark] database to compare results on the previous driver vs. new driver on any result using 7900XT or XTX and can confirm that this appears to be a real, if very rare issue.

“Among all results with the new driver, approximately 3% of the results show abnormal (very low) scores on Time Spy. No similar group of very low scores appear on the results with the previous driver version.”

Doederlein went on to clarify that they are running a test version of Windows 11 (Release Preview – so the most stable build), which the 3DMark dev noted isn’t supported by the benchmarking suite.

The developer added that AMD did eventually manage to reproduce this severe performance glitch and that “it is starting to look more and more like a driver issue,” with the best course of action for those bothered by the gremlin being to roll back to the previous driver. Or alternatively to just sit tight and wait for the fix to be deployed.

Analysis: More than meets the eye

There’s a bit more to this than meets the eye, as further in the thread on the Steam forums replying to the original complaint from Doederlein, there’s an RX 6800 GPU owner saying they’re affected – so maybe it’s not just an RDNA 3 issue – and that rolling back to the previous AMD driver version did not help. (The 3DMark dev seems pretty sure that the problem does pertain to the most recent AMD driver, though).

Furthermore, a couple of Nvidia RTX 4090 owners have chimed in saying they have been hit, too – but that’s just two scattered reports, so add seasoning there. Still, the commonality here appears to be running test versions of Windows 11. Indeed, one of those RTX 4090 owners lays the blame at the feet of the preview version of the next big update for Windows 11 (Moment 2).

Despite that, AMD still believes this bug to be a driver issue, so we’ll stick with that as the most accurate diagnosis so far – although it’s possible that the problem is also wrapped up in using a preview version of Windows 11, too.

The more positive news is that whoever is being affected here, it’s seemingly a rare bug. The broader concern for those encountering this issue is that maybe it’s slowing down games as well as 3DMark benchmarks, and it’s easy to see how folks might get paranoid about that possibility.

It’s certainly something that occurred to Doederlein, who as a result ran a whole bunch of tests on games. That included benchmarking with Guardians of the Galaxy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Dying Light 2, Batman Arkham Knight, Returnal, and more, but Doederlein found no performance hit whatsoever with any of them. So it does indeed seem like a benchmarking-only issue only, fingers crossed – hopefully AMD will shed more light on the bug in due course.

What we can rule out is that it’s any kind of 3DMark problem, because as the dev clarifies, the TimeSpy benchmark “has not been modified for ages”, so the misbehavior is clearly down to the AMD driver or Windows 11 (or both in combination perhaps, as mentioned).

Via Neowin

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Nvidia fixes a weird GPU driver bug that tanked CPU performance
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Nvidia’s GPU driver was recently found to have a bug that was spiking processor usage after quitting out of a game, but the good news is this problem has been fixed in a freshly released hotfix.

Neowin reports that the affected GeForce driver version, 531.18, now has a hotfix (531.26), and it cures two issues including the gremlin that was eating CPU resources.

This was an odd bug which saw an Nvidia Container process hang around after you’d stopped playing a game and exited. Going into Task Manager, gamers were seeing CPU resources being eaten up to the tune of 10% or even 15%, causing some slowdown to the host gaming PC.

If you didn’t open Task Manager and notice this process, then manually close it, your machine could run rather sluggishly and you’d have no idea why.

Still, the cure has arrived now, and if you were holding off updating to version 531.18 due to the presence of this bug, you can now go ahead.

Analysis: Notebook crashing blues also fixed

This fix has been deployed quickly, which is good to see. Nvidia chose the route of a hotfix because that can be pushed out immediately to those with GeForce graphics cards, rather than having to wait for a cure bundled with the next version of Team Green’s graphics driver.

The hotfix also comes packing a resolution for a second problem. Namely a random crash (stop error) happening with some laptops that have GeForce GTX 10 Series, or MX 250 / MX 350 mobile GPUs.

Both of these are quite nasty little glitches, so it’s good to see them stamped out by Nvidia in a swift manner. Indeed, because there was apparently some noticeable slowdown evident with the persisting Nvidia Container bug, slightly more paranoid types may even have wondered if something had happened malware-wise, as sudden system slowdown or lack of responsiveness can be a symptom of infection – so they may have worried unduly.

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Warning: AMD graphics driver bug could brick your Windows 11 PC
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Windows 11 (and 10) users are suffering from a really unpleasant bug that effectively bricks the PC, putting it in a boot failure loop, and it’s caused by the latest versions of AMD’s graphics driver, the company has confirmed.

PC World reported on this one (via Tom’s Hardware), specifically executive editor Brad Chacos who was unfortunate enough to experience the bug on his gaming PC.

The problem has been found in AMD’s Adrenalin 23.2.1 driver, and the most recent 23.2.2 driver, and leaves the user with a corrupted system.

The occurrence of this glitch is rare, though, and it depends on two factors. Firstly, when installing the new AMD GPU driver, the option for a clean installation (‘factory reset’) must be selected. Then you also need to be unlucky enough for Windows to kick in and perform an update in the background while installing the Adrenalin driver.

Due to the fact that it’s not likely for Windows Update to decide to fire up just at the wrong moment, it seems the bug is rare, which is at least something.

However, this can happen when Windows is set to update automatically (rather than scheduling an update), and if it does, it appears to be the case that the two update processes happening simultaneously (with a clean AMD driver install, as noted) causes severe havoc.

Chacos was left in a situation where instead of Windows booting, a Blue Screen of Death error came up, then the computer rebooted, and the same thing happened again, in a loop. Urgh…

AMD told PC World: “We have reproduced an issue that can occur in an extremely small number of instances if a PC update occurs during the installation of AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, and we are actively investigating.

“We recommend users ensure all system updates are applied or paused before installing the driver, and that the ‘Factory Reset’ option is unchecked during the AMD driver installation process. We are committed to resolve issues as quickly as possible and strongly encourage users to submit issues with AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition via the Bug Report Tool.”

Analysis: Better safe than sorry

So, as AMD suggests, if you are going to update your graphics driver, ensure you don’t go for that clean installation option (‘Factory Reset’) until AMD has cleared up this situation. Also, make sure any Windows driver updates are already applied (or updates are paused) before you go ahead with installing the AMD driver.

Following either of those rules should mean you’re going to be fine, but ensuring both are observed is obviously the safest thing to do in this situation. And caution definitely seems to be the right approach here, given what happens to PCs that get hit by this particular bug.

The way out of the boot failure loop, as Chacos points out, is to get into Windows recovery mode, but doing so apparently involves a tricky bit of timing. You need to hit the PC’s power button in the fleeting moment between BIOS options disappearing and the Windows loading circle appearing – and it took Chacos no fewer than 15 attempts before getting the timing right. The message is to persevere, but again, this is another unpleasant aspect of this bug.

While rare, given the gravity of this gremlin, hopefully AMD (and Microsoft) will be working to quickly clear up this one. It’s not exactly clear where the fault lies here, but as Tom’s and PC World point out, this has been a problem for a while now – and there’s no way Windows should be kicking in an update, when another update is already underway, because clearly that’s a recipe for chaos.

Fingers crossed for a swift resolution, then, and we wouldn’t blame folks for not taking the workaround presented and simply holding off installing the new AMD driver for a while until a full fix is implemented. As Chacos also observes, his PC was updated to the latest version of Windows 10 before going ahead with the Adrenalin driver installation – it may have been the case that something else, like the Game Bar, just happened to run a conflicting update.

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